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A growing body of work on candidate traits shows that people with a given social characteristic tend to prefer candidates or leaders who share that characteristic (Campbell and Cowley 2014; Cutler 2002). However, the existing evidence for whether women vote for women is mixed. For example, Kathleen Dolan found that candidate sex was a driver of voting behavior for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, but not in 1994 or 1996 (Dolan 1998, 2001, 2004). Eric Smith and Richard Fox used pooled U.S. data from 1988 to 1992 and found that well-educated women were more inclined to support women candidates in House but not Senate races (Smith and Fox 2001), and others have found that women are more likely to vote for women candidates only when they are perceived as being pro-feminist (Plutzer and Zipp 1996). By contrast Fulton (2014) found that women are not more likely to vote for women candidates in the United States, but that male Independents are somewhat less likely to vote for them. Others have found little evidence whatsoever of an association between candidate gender and vote choice (McElroy and Marsh 2010).

Existing research suggests that voters tend to respond positively to legislator independence due to two types of mechanism. First, dissent has an indirect effect, increasing a legislator’s media coverage and personal recognition among constituents (profile effects). Secondly, constituents react positively to dissent when this signals that the legislator has matching political or representational preferences (conditional evaluation). This article presents a third effect: dissent acts as a valence signal of integrity and trustworthiness. Consistent with the valence signalling mechanism, it uses new observational and experimental evidence to show that British voters have a strong and largely unconditional preference for legislators who dissent. The findings pose a dilemma for political systems that rely on strong and cohesive parties.

One image – the all-male coalition frontbench of 2014/15 – and three little words – ‘calm down dear’ – will likely come to epitomize the 2010–15 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition's regard for women and gender equality. The former embodies the maleness of the government; the latter symbolizes the masculinized nature of its politics. Since its very inception, the coalition has been dogged by questions of women and gender equality. Two dominant tropes stand out. First, the coalition's austerity politics are accused of having a disproportionate and negative impact on women – as consumers, users and employees of the welfare state. Second, and linked, the coalition, and especially the Conservatives, are said to have struggled to attract the woman voter. That said, any serious account of what the coalition ‘did for women’ has to be more nuanced. Since 2010, individual coalition policy developments and legislative interventions have, in many instances, opened up opportunities for women; offering women greater choice. These include: greater flexibility in parental leave; the right to request flexible working, now available to all employees; greater state support in the tax system for childcare; and various measures taken, domestically and internationally, to address women's health, and violence against women (VAW). The commitment to protect NHS funding and overseas aid – the coalition made a firm commitment to retain the outgoing Labour government's pledge to allocate 0.7 per cent of GNI to development spending for example – had a significant gender dimension. Collectively, these priorities and interventions arguably constitute evidence of a wider diffusion of liberal feminist values in British politics and society.

Such a development should not, in all respects, be that surprising given that the coalition followed the most feminist governments to-date, the New Labour years of 1997–2010. By 2010 a cross-party gendered marketplace in British politics was established: all the three main parties explicitly competed over a ‘women's terrain’.

Research has explored the impact of politicians holding second jobs, or moonlighting, on their performance and recruitment, but less is known about how citizens respond to such behavior. Citizens may react negatively to Members of Parliament (MPs) moonlighting, viewing outside earnings as a conflict of interest or a distraction, or instead they might view MPs with second incomes positively, seeing them as a connection with the “real world” beyond politics. Utilizing a series of survey experiments, we assess how British citizens respond to MPs moonlighting. We demonstrate preferences more complex than those revealed by traditional survey instruments. Citizens respond to both size and source of income. They do not respond negatively to all second incomes; they are more sympathetic to the entrepreneur who continues to draw an income than medical doctors or lawyers who continue to practice. They are most hostile to politicians who take on part-time company directorships.

This article showcases a research, dissemination and impact study on the striptease industry that explores why key stakeholders (dancers) are excluded, and ways that inclusion in policy development is achievable. This form of erotic work has undergone increased attention from policy and regulatory officials in recent years with the introduction of a new licensing process as venues are categorised as Sexual Entertainment Venues. The article will demonstrate how community and campaign group voices were heard over that of the dancers themselves, who were not consulted in the process of the legislative change. However, the article shows how small but significant interventions into policy development by direct work with stakeholders (here Licensing Committees and officers) can make steps towards an inclusion of dancer welfare and safety issues. Finally, we propose a set of principles that can ensure dancer and sex worker voices are included in policy consultation and decision making to ensure evidence-based policy making.

The point of departure for this study is the recent work of Burden (2008) on the “gender gap” in partisanship in the United States. He shows that the preponderance of Democratic identification among women is partly a function of the measurement of party identification. When respondents were asked “Do you feel that you are” rather than, more traditionally, “Do you think of yourself as” a Democrat or Republican, the sex gap narrowed to statistical nonsignificance. Burden's explanation for this result lies in the psychology of partisanship. The traditional “think of yourself as” (or cognitive) question primes women to consider their partisanship as a social identity, which in turn activates the stereotypical association between women and the Democratic Party. The “feel that you are” (or affective) question encourages a deeper, more personalized response, rendering social identity less relevant and thereby nullifying the effect of that stereotype.

This article analyses the relationship between the representatives and the represented by comparing elite and mass attitudes to gender equality and women’s representation in Britain. In so doing, the authors take up arguments in the recent theoretical literature on representation that question the value of empirical research of Pitkin’s distinction between substantive and descriptive representation. They argue that if men and women have different attitudes at the mass level, which are reproduced amongst political elites, then the numerical under-representation of women may have negative implications for women’s substantive representation. The analysis is conducted on the British Election Study (BES) and the British Representation Study (BRS) series.

This edited volume addresses themes pertinent to all who study
politics and gender, namely, how to incorporate claims for both equality
and difference into politics, constitutional politics particularly. It
achieves a difficult balance for any edited volume by discussing common
themes and avoiding a focus on overly narrow debates. Thus, a range of
problems and concepts are explored using empirical and theoretical
research that provides a comprehensive insight into women's attempts
to transform constitutions. The chapters are synthesized in the
introduction and the conclusion, providing the reader with a more general
insight. The editors highlight the tendency for mainstream analysis to
oversimplify women's role in constitutional change. This theme is
developed in other chapters. Anne Marie Goetz considers gender and
accountability systems. She demonstrates the gendered assumptions
underlying what is usually described as accountability failure. For
example, should audit offices review whether resources are unequally
distributed between the sexes?

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